Digital Commons Network^™

Perspectives Of Teacher Education Graduates About Their Cooperating Teachers During Preservice Placements., Dawn Miller Taylor

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

A Project Designed To Examine The Effects That Collaborative Peer Interactions Have On The Professional Development Of Teachers, Van Holloway

Master of Education Research Theses

Much research links collaborative experiences to the professional development of teachers. The author of this study designed a project, called the Buddy System, which provided opportunities for teachers to observe one another in the classroom and to interact with one another collaboratively. The goal was to determine if these activities provided a means of professional development. After the implementation of this sixteen-week project, the author collected data from a variety of sources which indicated that professional development had taken place.

Culture Of Growth: Teacher Collaboration For The Empowerment Of All Students, Kamilla Bahbahani

Theses and Dissertations in Urban Studies

This dissertation documents an in-depth year long qualitative case study of three elementary school teachers to address the following research question: what characterizes, and what are the major influences on, an integrated, constructivist-oriented approach to elementary math instruction? The researcher, working collaboratively with the teachers, used a combination of interviews, observations, journaling, and informal discourse to learn about what they want to do in their classes, the various pressures they feel for performance and student learning, the forces they balance in making their instructional choices, and the ways in which they make instructional choices and change their approaches over time. …

Indicators Of Teacher Collaboration In Texas Public High Schools, Michael James Mcclure

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

The study employs both quantitative and qualitative data to extend the work of Rosenholtz (1991) with public elementary schools and the work of Hickey (1994) with public secondary schools in trying to assess the extent to which four pre-defined socio-organizational factors predict teacher collaboration in public schools. The four socio-organizational factors include: teacher certainty about a technical culture and their instructional capability; shared instructional goals; teacher involvement in decision making about instructional matters; and teacher involvement in team teaching. The study also investigates the hypothesis that the academic departments in public secondary schools provide structures that more nearly approach the …

The Role Of Celebration In Building Classroom-Learning Communities., Virginia Farr

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Today, teachers are expected to play a major role in the socialization of their students. Crafting strong classroom communities that incorporate celebration is one technique some teachers have developed to enhance a sense of belonging in their classroom.

The purpose of this study was to determine the perceptions of teachers regarding what the practice of celebration accomplishes for the teacher, student, and class in reference to building and maintaining a classroom learning community. This study also examined approaches that teachers found to be the most successful in creating celebrations.

A multiple-site study design was used to gather qualitative data at …

Belonging In Parent-School Partnerships: Perspectives Of Parents Of Middle School Students With Autism, Michael Wayne Riley

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this study is to contribute to understandings of parent-school relationships involving parents of students with autism by exploring notions of belonging with a small group of parents. The purpose of the study is to describe the experiences of middle school parents of children with autism. From these descriptions, I examined how parents of students with autism might contribute to understandings of belonging in school-family partnerships and enable schools and families to collaborate more effectively. This study addresses an apparent gap in understandings of belonging of parents of children with autism in their relationships with their child's school. …

An Exploratory Analysis Of Mexican-American Parental Involvement Perspectives On Home, School, And Community Collaboration, Lisa Kay Hall-Irby

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

When schools consider their relationship with families as a partnership wherein the home and school contribute to children's educational and social development, the results are increased levels of parental involvement. This exploratory analysis involves a study of Mexican-American parents and their perspectives on how they perceive themselves in the home, school, and community collaboration process. This study seeks to explore the traditional parental involvement model and uses existing theory that challenges the traditional model to create a new re-conceptualized model of parental involvement. Using qualitative case study methodology parental involvement data were gathered by using five focus groups and a …

Reasons For Collaboration Among European And African American Greek Councils, James David Louk

Legacy ETDs

The study examines the barriers that inhibit collaboration between traditionally European-American fraternities and sororities and historically African-American fraternities and sororities. In the study, 176 members of the fraternity/sorority community responded to the survey. The survey was developed by the researcher to address issues of collaboration between similar governing council's member organizations, reasons for collaboration with organizations in the different governing council, as well as to explore reasons collaboration had not occurred. Membership in a governing council was used as the defining variable to different responses. The results indicated that lack of knowledge ofthe cross racial council's member organizations and members …

A Set Of Student-Invested Materials For A Conversation Class, David J. Kehe, Peggy Dustin Kehe

MA TESOL Collection

This paper describes eleven speaking projects which have been developed around the beliefs that a conversation class is successful when:

- the focus is on the students talking, not the teacher talking

- the atmosphere is non-threatening

- the material is personally relevant

- the students use each other as sources of correction

Each project is comprised of two separate speaking activities. The first uses teacher-prepared material. The second consists of four steps in which students: (1) in groups, create material modeled after the teacher-prepared material, (2) have it checked by the teacher, (3) use it with the whole class.